Good morning friends.It was being told that 15 private executive class jets parked at the airport.Airport officials said even the newly-extended apron of old international building was totally occupied. Movement of routine aircraft was delayed by 10 to 15 minutes because of heavy traffic.

Private jets were jostling for space over Ahmedabad’s skies on Monday morning when Vibrant Gujarat investor summit took off. Officials at Air Traffic Control (ATC) had a busy time handling unscheduled flights. Around the time when summit was being inaugurated, there were 15 private executive class jets parked at the airport.

Besides there were four choppers in the parking. At one point, ATC Officials began to permit them at an interval of 10 minutes and each jet was cleared to fly 2000 feet below the first one, to avoid a mishap.

Airport officials said that if the first jet was given permission to fly at 28,000 feet, another one was given permission to fly at 26,000 feet and third at 24,000.

On an average, take off and landing movement of aircrafts is around 60 each, but on Monday, this shot up by 25 per cent increasing movement to around 75 landing and take off each.

They added that there was a parking space crunch as almost all aprons were totally packed. Ahmedabad Airport, after expansion, has the capacity to house 27 aircrafts and four jumbo aircrafts.

Officials said even the newly-extended apron of old international building was totally occupied. Because of heavy traffic, movement of routine aircraft was delayed by 10 to 15 minutes in the afternoon.

The movement of private executive jets continued till late night and at 9 pm, there were two jets, of which, one was scheduled to leave in the morning on Tuesday.

Officials said two choppers left for Jamnagar, probably flying Mukesh Ambani to Reliance refinery after the Vibrant inauguration. Officials said that majority of the private jets had come from Mumbai or Delhi and all were handled by private operators who usually managed the flight movement of the VIPs.

At the system level, DRDO has been able to develop light compact aircraft Tejas and several types of missiles. The significance of these achievements has to be viewed against the stringent embargo regimes, which we faced over years.

These developments illustrate India’s ability to realise most complex and sophisticated engineering products and in many cases the world’s best like the remote sensing satellites. The engineering efforts in the early phase of India’s development in enterprises like steel, cement, locomotives, power and fertilizers continue to receive latest technology both from indigenous and imported know how.

So also is agriculture, which receives inputs from developments like genetic engineering and precision farming. Developments like Nano Car, an engineering marvel, represent another dimension.

The resultant repository of science and technology knowledge has certainly given India a unique position as an advanced country in the developing world. The sustained economic growth of 9 to 10% coupled with consolidation and expansion of S and amp;T foundations would lead India to be a world leader of 21st century.